Requirements of High Status in

A successful person may be a man or a woman, of any race, who has been able to accumulate money, power and renown through his or her own accomplishments (rather than through inheritance) in one of the myriad sectors of the commercial world (including sport, art and scientific research).


Because societies are in practice trusted to be “meritocratic,” financial achievements are necessarily understood to be “deserved.” The ability to accumulate wealth is prized as proof of the presence of at least four cardinal virtues: creativity, courage, intelligence and stamina. The presence or absence of other virtues—humility and godliness, for example—rarely detains attention. That success is no longer attributed, as in past societies, to “luck,” “providence” or “God” is a reflection of the collective secular faith we now place in individual will power. Financial failures are judged to be similarly merited, with unemployment’s bearing some of the shame that physical cowardice earned in warrior eras. Money is meanwhile invested with an ethical quality. Its relative quantity indicates the virtue of its possessor, as do the material goods it can buy. Like the Cubeo’s necklace of jaguar teeth, a prosperous way of life signals worthiness, while ownership of a rusted old car or a threadbare home may prompt suppositions of moral deficiency. Aside from its promise of high status, wealth is promoted on the basis of its capacity to deliver happiness by granting access to an array of ever-changing conveniences and luxuries, the thought of whose absence in the restricted lives of the previous generations can invoke pity and wonder.